After the 1990 reunification, extensive discussions were held in Germany among the security community, political elites and the general public about the country’s new position in today’s world. A gradual shift to an active participation in military out-of-area operations is one of the most significant features of German security policy since unification in 1990. These operations are held under the auspices of many international institutions, in particular the UN, NATO and the European Union.
As a rule, German participation in military out-of-area operations takes place in a multilateral framework. A lot of attention is paid to the German participation in UN peacekeeping. On the other hand, the research of German participation in the NATO peace support operation is a little bit underdeveloped. Therefore, the paper aims to answer the research question of under what conditions and their combination Germany participates in NATO peace support operations and under which it does not.
Data will be obtained from qualitative content analysis of the primary sources of information, from structured interviews conducted with the German experts and policy makers and from the analysis of rich secondary literature dealing with the German and security policy. In the course of the empirical base building, the triangulation will be used in order to gain relevant data.
The acquired data will be evaluated via the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Crisp QCA is based on the combination of Boolean algebra and set theory while the fuzzy set QCA incorporates the Zade’s fuzzy se theory. It used to be a case-oriented approach suitable for small-N research. Nevertheless, its area of application is not limited to dozens of cases and this method is now used for analysing hundreds of cases as well. The QCA technique is “case-oriented” in the sense that it deals with a limited number of complex cases in a “configurational” or “conjunctural” way. QCA techniques allow for “conjunctural causation” across observed cases. That means that different constellations of factors may lead to the same effect. For the conference paper, crisp set QCA will be deployed.
The paper will reveal and analyses the patterns of the German participation in NATO peace support operations and will report necessary and sufficient conditions for German participation. The received formulas will be interpreted against the background of the IR theories.
